Category: Be fully present

Healing by our presence

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Since the condition that has caused our dis-ease is a fixed, partial view of our experience, we cannot promote healing just by adopting a different view. It might be a better view, it might be a wonderful view, it might be the greatest view of reality in the world, but it will not be healing if it’s just another set of beliefs and attitudes. Instead of building bigger or fancier boxes, we need to develop the antidote to all our partial views of reality: being present with our experience as it is. We could call it beginner’s mind. This is unconditional presence. As Suzuki Roshi says “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few” We have all become experts at being ourselves, and in so doing we have lost our ability to be present with our experience in a fresh, open-minded way.

John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening

Not getting in the way

Karl Duffy1 Comment

awake2Just like the question “Can you see your own eyes?” Nobody can see their own eyes. I can see your eyes but I can’t see my eyes. I’m sitting right here, I’ve got two eyes and I can’t see them. But you can see my eyes. But there’s no need for me to see my eyes because I can see! It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? If I started saying “Why can’t I see my own eyes?” you’d think “Ajahn Sumedho’s really weird, isn’t he!” Looking in a mirror you can see a reflection, but that’s not your eyes, it’s a reflection of your eyes. There’s no way that I’ve been able to look and see my own eyes, but then it’s not necessary to see your own eyes. It’s not necessary to know who it is that knows — because there’s knowing.

Ajahn Sumedho

Resting our mind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

474676v1Mindfulness involves resting our mind in a place where there is no anxiety, no fear. In fact, in that place we find the opposite. We find resourcefulness, courage, and a quiet happening. Where is that “place”? It is not a geographical location. It is not a location in time. It is the flowing time and place of the present moment. Anxiety is fuelled by thoughts of past and future. When we drop those thoughts, we drop anxiety and find ourselves at ease.

Jan Chozen Bays, How to Train a Wild Elephant

Watching our thoughts

Karl Duffy1 Comment

cat village (1 of 1)

 

 

A thought is an object to be known

just as the absence of thoughts is an object to be known.

What is the difference?

Sayadaw U Tejaniya

Bare attention to the now

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Coming homeEverything appears – in the present moment, right now. Things happen,  right now, not in past or present. So practice should be the practice of “right now.” When we, you know, catch things, how you catch it? You cannot…..you cannot catch past or future. You can catch just the present moment, right now. If you want to catch someone, you should catch him right now, not past or not in future. So if you want to practice, you should practice right now. But because we are always, you know, involved in thinking mind, and because we try to understand teaching, you know, with seeking mind, in term of present or past or now or later,  or always….. The wave and water, right now, it is – wave is water, water is wave. But if you think about it,  you have the idea of water and idea of wave because you saw it, because you saw the wave and you have idea of water. And you may think: “But that is water. Water is something like this, you know.”  But right now when you see waves on the water, wave is water and water is wave, right now, when you don’t think.

From a transcript of Suzuki Roshi talk, 1969, Emptiness is Form

What we have

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it.

It is all we ever have, so we might as well work with it rather than struggling against it.

We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.

Pema Chodron